Why Roy Moore's Bigotry Should Have Ended His Campaign Years Ago

Once the press declared that Judge Roy Moore lost to Doug Jones in the Alabama special election to fill the Senate seat of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III — that walking Confederate monument — jubilation filled all my social media feeds along with the faces of select pundits across cable news. Many offered various versions of the sentiment, “Thank you, Alabama!” as others mentioned that Jones’ win brought them to tears. As relieved as I am that a man accused of pedophilia will not be entering the U.S. Senate, I am not moved, nor am I at all proud of the electorate — well, except for Black folks.

If anything, I remain angry. Angry because Roy Moore is a racist, sexist, and anti-Muslim xenophobe. Above all those, though, Moore is a homophobe, and it is gay people that have long been his primary targets of insult and discrimination. The fact that his homophobia alone was not enough to drive a national conversation about his Senate ineligibility continues to infuriate me.

My anger echoes that of William Nathan Mathis, a 74-year-old Alabama peanut farmer, who went viral on Election Day following his interview outside a Roy Moore rally. Holding a picture of his daughter, who committed suicide in 1995, Mathis carried a hand-lettered placard that read, “Judge Roy Moore called my daughter Patti Sue Mathis a pervert because she was gay.”
Asked to expand on his views, Mathis added: “[Moore] said all gay people are perverts, abominations. That’s not true. We don’t need a person like this in Washington. That’s why I am here.”

The owner of a Southern twang myself, and as tickled as I was by his pronunciation of pervert as “pre-vert”, I was deeply moved by the fact that finally, someone commanded national attention while addressing Moore’s constant condemnation of gay people — rhetoric that has spanned decades. When he served on the Alabama Supreme Court, Moore wrote a 2002 opinion on a case involving the question of whether to grant a lesbian woman custody of her son, that homosexuality was “an act of sexual misconduct punishable as a crime in Alabama, a crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one’s ability to describe it.”

On Election Day, when asked if Moore still felt this way about homosexuality, a campaign spokesman said on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper, “probably.”

Of course he does. During an interview on C-Span in 2005, when Moore was asked outright if he thought being gay should be illegal he said, “Homosexual conduct should be illegal, yes.” Moore has also blamed homosexuality for causing 9/11 and argued that Vladimir Putin was “right” about his own homophobic viewpoints. Meanwhile, in 2012, Moore claimed he wasn’t sure if gay people ought to be executed.

Why was none of this enough to bring Moore down? Perhaps because his virulent homophobia has become so normalized that it’s overlooked by national media at large. There is a long history of the GOP’s love for anti-LGBTQ+ politicians. There are are more recent ones like first-term Republican State Rep. Wesley Goodman, who resigned last month after he was caught having sex with another man in his office. Goodman joins a long list of hypocrites including Troy King, Richard Curtis, Randy Boehning, Steve Wiles, and numerous others.

Yet national Republican leaders never have to answer for their hypocrisy or the pervasiveness of homophobia within the party. Look at House Majority Whip and consistent anti-gay bigot Steve Scalise, who, as fate would have it, had his life saved a Black lesbian police officer after being shot at a congressional baseball practice. Scalise maintained his pro-gun, anti-gay views and was never confronted about it in the press.

Advertisement

Considering this pattern of normalizing homophobia by the GOP and the national press corps alike, it’s no wonder why Moore’s anti-gay viewpoints didn’t take him down, even as he and his supporters continued to rub it in all our faces. To wit, after being met with allegations of preying on teenage girls, supporters gathered together and managed to somehow make Moore’s accused behavior be about the purported perversion of gay people. A rabbi stood next to a smiling Roy Moore and claimed that the allegations were related to the “LGBT mafia” and “homosexualist gay terrorism.” Another warned that “homosexual sodomy” destroys those who partake in the fun and the nations that allow it.

What’s most grating about all this leading up to the election — and now following it — is that some simply cannot fathom how white voters, whether evangelical, with a degree, without a degree, working class, middle class, upper-middle class, and of all genders, continued to support Moore in spite of the allegations that he targeted teenage girls. But is it not easy to see how? They all place white patriarchy above all else. That means if they could sacrifice the humanities of Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, women, and Moore’s biggest targets, members of the LGBTQ+ community, what are a few teenage girls to them? Let’s shout it from the rooftops: If not for Black voters, an accused pedophile would be heading to the Senate.

Be relieved that is not the case, but let’s not pat ourselves on the back, because before he was accused of being a pedophile, he had long proven what a homophobic monster he was. Then reflect on this inconvenient truth: his bigotry alone was not enough to end his campaign, nor was it worthy enough to spur national dialogue. The need for this man to be an accused pedophile before the nation deemed him unworthy is exactly why despite one Roy Moore being kept out of office, so many like him remain in theirs.

Michael Arceneaux is a writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the failing New York Times Magazine, The Root, Elle, Complex, Teen Vogue, Rolling Stone, and Esquire, among others. Additionally, he's run his mouth for networks such as Viceland, MSNBC, VH1, and BET. His first book, I Can't Date Jesus, will be released July 2018 via Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, although he still hasn't told his mother the title.

them, a next-generation community platform, chronicles and celebrates the stories, people and voices that are emerging and inspiring all of us, ranging in topics from pop culture and style to politics and news, all through the lens of today’s LGBTQ community.